Ford

After GM announced its new electric car plans today, rival American automaker Ford confirmed that they also have a new electric car effort led by a new internal team.
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A day after we reported on Ford potentially going ‘all-in’ on all-electric vehicles under new leadership, the American automaker announced a new expansion of its all-electric vehicle lineup.

Though it’s only for the Chinese market.
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Ford’s electrification plan has been disappointing to EV enthusiasts. They focused on hybrid vehicles and the company’s first all-electric vehicle built from the ground up to be electric is not expected to arrive until 2020.

But now an analyst sees an opportunity for Ford to go ‘all-in’ on EVs following the ousting of CEO Mark Fields and appointment of Jim Hackett.
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Earlier this year, Deutsche Post (DHL) announced that Ford won an important contract to build 2,500 all-electric vans for the logistic company.

The companies are now unveiling the new electric truck.
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Lucid Motors keeps impressing us with its all-electric sedan under development, the Lucid Air, which recently reached a 235 mph (378 km/h) top speed on the track.

But the company’s efforts to bring the vehicle to market seem to be moving slowly. After announcing its EV factory to be built in Arizona back in November 2016, nothing has moved as the company is reportedly trying to raise the $700 million needed to build the plant.

Now they reportedly shifted their strategy to look into the potential sale of the company and they are said to have been holding talks with none other than Ford. 
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Ford has won an important contract to further electrify Deutsche Post’s fleet of delivery vehicles.

Deutsche Post has already been deploying electric vehicles in its fleet, but this new contract should quickly add 2,500 all-electric vans on the roads.
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Only a few days after ousting CEO Mark Fields and appointing Jim Hackett, the head of the automaker’s ‘Smart Mobility’ division, as the new head of the company, Ford is again announcing a new global leadership shakeup.

The changes include bringing back a longtime Ford electric powertrain engineer who left for Uber last year to now lead electric vehicles and autonomous driving programs at the automaker.
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Ford’s Model T is credited for creating a transportation revolution by making the first affordable and truly mass-produced car.

Tesla is trying to do the same thing with electric cars, which make for an interesting comparison to track their respective progression.
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Ford had a massive leadership shakeup today that saw CEO and longtime executive Mark Field ousted and replaced by Jim Hackett, the head of the automaker’s ‘Smart Mobility’ division.

The company also appointed a new executive in charge of “strategy and business model development for electrified vehicles and autonomous vehicles.”
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The only all-electric cars that Ford currently sells are compliance cars built on existing gas-powered platforms. Earlier this year, the automaker announced that its first all-electric car built to be electric from the ground up will come out in 2020.

Raj Nair, Ford’s Chief Technology Officer, now says that the vehicle will be mass-produced, hinting that it will not be a compliance car, and priced affordably.
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Last weekend, I published an article arguing that the US auto industry needs a push to transition its biggest segment, trucks, to being powered by batteries and Tesla unveiling its all-electric pickup truck could be that needed push.

Interestingly, a few days later, Ford made a rare comment on a possible all-electric pickup truck.
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In January we reported on Ford’s big strategic expansion into electrified vehicles, announcing seven electrified cars with six more to come. Today Ford issued a press release about two EVs they will bring to the Chinese market: a plug-in version of the Mondeo (Fusion) sedan and an all-new fully-electric small SUV. The fully electric SUV has so far only been announced on paper, not given a model name or shown as a concept car. Ford’s only specifications are that it will have a range of more than 450km (280 miles) and will come to China “within five years.”

Ford called the two models “new” in their press release today, but they’re really “new-to-China” rather than new overall.  The small SUV was already announced in the January strategic announcement linked above, and the Mondeo is just the “world” version of the car Ford calls the Fusion in the US.  So it looks like these two “new” cars don’t actually represent two of the six unannounced cars Ford alluded to in their January announcement.

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There are a lot of companies now working on autonomous driving technologies and as many approaches to achieve the ultimate goal of a safe fully self-driving system. With such a transformative technology, there will be an extraordinarily important first-mover advantage.

Navigant Research attempted to create a leaderboard based on each company’s vision and execution in order to get an idea of which ones might have a lead. It published the report this week with interesting results.
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Ford announced that it qualified 3 companies making electric powertrains for its chassis through its Electric Qualified Vehicle Modifier (eQVM) program. Its entire lineup of commercial trucks will offer some form of electric powertrains, either hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and even all-electric.

One company was even qualified to make a F-150 pickup truck with a plug-in hybrid powertrain.
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President Donald Trump has been using the threat of a border tax in order to try to convince companies to increase domestic production. It has often been a major point of discussion when the President has been dealing with auto industry executives – some are on his advisory council.

A new study looked into the possible impact of the proposed border tax on the cost of the vehicles sold by automakers in the US. They found that Tesla’s prices would be the least affected by Trump’s border tax among all automakers – foreign and domestic.
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In this week’s top stories: Tesla CEO Elon Musk shares some thoughts on the upcoming Trump administration, Tesla Model 3 could soon be the most American made car, Chargepoint shows us its new 400kW charging station at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, and Ford, Faraday Future and others unveil their latest EVs and concepts at the show.

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Today Ford announced a big strategic expansion into electric and electrified vehicles, announcing 7 coming “electrified” vehicle models with 6 more to be announced in the near future.  Among the announced vehicles are a hybrid Mustang and F-150, a hybrid autonomous rideshare vehicle, a plug-in hybrid Transit, and a fully electric SUV.

These are welcome steps from Ford and signal a pretty significant strategic shift towards “electrified vehicles,” which they see overtaking gas vehicles within 15 years, but I, as usual, think they fall short in terms of aggressiveness.  Check beneath the jump for some analysis of today’s announcements.

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Ford is making a big announcement in electrification today. CEO Mark Field confirmed several new models will receive electric drivetrain options, including its flagship F-150 pickup truck that will double as an on-site generator. In 2015, Ford announced a $4.5 billion investment in electric vehicles in order to introduce 13 new models.

Today, it confirmed 7 of those 13 new models and the list will surprise a few: a new all-electric SUV with “at least” 300 miles of range, a hybrid F-150 and a hybrid Mustang, a Transit Custom plug-in hybrid and 2 new electric police vehicles.
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After GM took the opportunity to expand its self-driving test fleet following its home state of Michigan opening its roads to the technology, now Ford announces an expansion of its own test fleet with some cars going to Michigan and to its current fleet in California.

The automaker also released the first images of its next generation autonomous test vehicle using the Ford Fusion Hybrid. It features a new and significantly better-integrated sensor suite.
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BMW, Daimler’s Mercedes, Ford, and Volkswagen’s Audi and Porsche announced today that they are creating a joint-venture with the goal of a “quick build-up of a sizable number of stations in order to enable long-range travel for battery electric vehicle drivers.”

The new venture is similar to the Ultra E project announced earlier this year to deploy 25 new charging station for electric vehicles along the trans-European transport network (TEN-T), but it’s apparently a separate and much more ambitious project to deploy 400 stations across Europe.
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We haven’t talked about Ford’s electric vehicle programs for a while now. That’s because there isn’t much to talk about. The company has fallen behind the competition when it comes to 200+ miles electric vehicles to compete with the likes of the Tesla Model 3 or the Chevy Bolt EV coming next year since its own entry in the segment is only planned for 2019.

Late last year, Ford announced a $4.5 billion investment in EV technology and 13 new electric models coming to its lineup by 2020, but we haven’t really seen the fruit of the investment just yet.

Though Ford hasn’t fallen behind for the current generation of mid-range electric vehicles with its new 2017 Ford Focus Electric. The vehicle mostly went under the radar, but the company has confirmed a 33.5 kWh battery pack for an EPA-rated range of 115 miles on a single charge.
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